Monday, 7 September 2015

The Hollies: Non-Album Songs Part Two: 1971-2014

Deciding
that the harder tones of 'Long Cool Woman' is the way to go, The Hollies try to
come up with a close substitute (albeit one that's in-your-face rather than
smoky). The riff used on [192] 'Hey
Willy' is arguably better, repetitively swirling about the song like an
angry gnat, although the lyrics aren't quite there. A tribute (of sorts) to
Nash, this song 'borrows' the nickname his CSN bandmates gave him ('William'
being Graham's middle name) and remembering the daft days of 1967 when Nash
wore outrageous costumes to pr events ('Hey, Sadie, you dress like a lady, the
fellars call you crazy - but you really are a pretty one!') You wonder what
Nash made of it all or whether he even knows about this song (leaking at #22
it's not exactly one of the better known Hollies singles). The Hollies always
do gritty well, though, and like 'Woman' and 'Curly Billy' to come, the
production of this track makes up for any holes in the song with just the right
mixture of gloss and raw power. Bobby is on top form again, straining at the
least for most of the song until Clarke hits the line 'listen to the drumming
and listen to the beat' where he outs-does Keith Moon! The middle eight is once
again the most thrilling thing here, as the three guitarists in tandem (Clarke
is playing too) suddenly zoom from the high note of the phrase down to the bottom,
adding a real frisson of energy. A word too for 'sixth Hollie' Pete Wingfield
who improvises some superb piano across this track. All in all B-side material
rescued to A-side status thanks to another thrilling performance. While
decidedly less original than 'Long Cool Woman', this song deserved to be
another hit for the band. Find it on: most Hollies
best-ofs

So
we come to the end of an era: a novelty quirky B-side before things get more
serious. [193] 'Row The Boat
Together' sounds like a re-write of Neil Diamond's 'The Boat That I Row'
with another boat that's 'big enough for two'. Clarke's narrator is 'on the
boat, staying afloat' and hoping to 'get to the other side', all set to a busy
Bobby drum track and some nice stereo panning from two guitars which do sound
like choppy seas. There's something else odd going on in this track though: 'If
you don't mind the colour of my skin I'll help you not to fall in' runs the
second verse, hinting both that Clarke's narrator is meant to be an
African-American and that he was intending something deeper in this song about
mankind getting along together which never quite comes off (the race theme is
never mentioned again, for instance). Chances are The Hollies have finally
given in and treated their B-sides like everyone else did: silly songs to be
wrapped up as quickly as possible whether they make sense or not. This isn't
one of their best, but a catchy riff still makes it worth a listen. Find it on: The CD Re-issue of 'Confessions Of The Mind'

A
late period Hicks/Lynch song, [194] 'Oh Granny!' is likely to have been the last time Clarke sang with
The Hollies until rejoining the band in late 1973. This track always sounded
deeply out of place as the B-side of the Rickfors-era single 'The Baby', a
remnant of a heavier, harsher era The Hollies had now moved away from. Like
many of 'Hicks and Lynches' collaborations, this one is about guilt (again what
had the pair been up to?!), the narrator staying out of his granny's life
because he feels unloved - only to regret the fact after she dies and learns
she was 'pining for a baby'. An unusually sad song by Hollies standards, it's
odd that they don't do what they always do and add in a 'jolly chorus' or a
happier beat to this song: instead most of the weight is carried by Hicks'
snarling guitar sideswipes (the very sound of a recalcitrant teenager) and a
slow organ track that shuffled downwards to the depths of hell. The Hollies
never quite finds a home for themselves on this track, which doesn't finish so
much as suddenly cut off into silence, leaving a sad story unusually
unresolved. Find it on: the CD re-issue of 'Romany',
for some strange reason

The
first time that many fans got to hear the 'new' Hollies sound was the broody
and brooding [207a and b] 'The
Baby', which sees the band return to writer Chip Taylor for the first
time since [81] 'I Can't Let Go'. Like many of the band's most recent songs
it's about a family down on their luck: an unwanted babe in arms putting a
strain on a 'child bride' couple who barely know each other after a 'passion in
the spring'. The Hollies excel themselves with the performance on this one:
Rickfors' golden lead simply oozing emotion with a rougher, rawer vocal than
normal and Hicks picking out the majestic banjo-like solo on a sitar! (He had a
'sitar' built in the shape of a guitar to play this song properly on stage in
the 1990s and 00s!) Interestingly the rhythm section aren't that well catered
for here - odd seeing as 'I Can't Let Go' is perhaps the definitive Hollies
rhythm song. The result is a dynamic performance of a cracking song, but one
that was inevitably going to sell poorly when released as a single: this just
isn't top 40 material and as the band rightly complained afterwards how many of
their fans were likely to walk into a shop and demand 'that hip new song by The
Hollies, called 'The Baby'. Interestingly, however, this is the song that
nearly always grabs my attention when heard in the middle of Hollies
compilations where it sounds rather good and out-powers most of their other
material. The 'Hollies At 50'** compilation went one better by including a
'live' performance of the song from 1972: while sketchier than the record with
a few missed harmony cues and a more eccentric solo it proves once again what a
strong live draw The Hollies were. Find it on: some
Hollies compilations, the Magic CD re-issue of 'Romany' and 'The Long Road
Home' (2003)

A
surprise addition to the French label Magic's re-issue of the 'Romany' album
was an alternate version of [198b] 'Magic Woman Touch'. While listed as an 'acoustic mix' of the
album track, it actually sounds like a completely different take to my ears:
Rickfors is slower and more hesitant here and the harmonies come in at
different times. The chance to hear some undiluted Hollie harmonies at their
peak and the band sounding even more like CSN than usual is irresistible, with
a great song sounding even better (especially the moment around the 2:30 mark
when about half of the electric band suddenly filter in with full power before
disappearing again at about 2:50). I'm not sure I'd take it over the original
but this is another strong performance of another great song that shows off
just what a tight unit The Hollies were in this era. Find
it on: the CD re-issues of both 'Romany' and 'Out On The Road'

[208]
'Indian Girl' however,
suffers from the other problem. This nice Terry Sylvester song about an Indian
Boy falling in love sounds delightful when dressed up to the nines on his
eponymous solo album. The Hollies, though, don't really seem to 'get' this
song: the harmonies are too rough, the backing a little too heavy and the
general feel a bit lacklustre with only the chorus - where the sun comes out -
really standing out. In truth The Hollies were probably a bit rushed: Rickfors'
vocals were taking longer to record than anticipated and it sounds as if the
poor understated 'Indian Girl' was the song that lost out. Find it on: the CD re-issues of both 'Romany' and 'Out On
The Road'

Colin
Horton Jennings had made a name for himself writing moody slow ballads full of
Hollie melancholy on 'Romany'. Though not quite up to the rest of that album, [209]
'Papa Rain' is clearly
cut from the same cloth: Rickfors' voice all but purrs on this gentle song
about the fact that his loved one's just stood him slowly dawns on the narrator
as he waits on the other end of a phone line, his heart 'dying' with every
extra bleep of the receiver. The Hollies harmonies on the chorus are exquisite
and Hicks adds a fascinating guitar-sitar part (something he used live on
versions of 'The Baby' with a specially modified guitar), so much so that you
don't really care or notice that all this song is about is an engaged phone
line. Find it on: some CD re-issues of 'Romany'

[210]
'Witchy Woman' is
probably the least interesting song from the 'Romany' sessions, a cover of Don
Henly's sulky Eagles song. Rickfors is in good voice and there's a towering
three-way guitar battle between Rickfors, Sylvester and Hicks, but this song
never really catches fire and The Hollies aren't at their best on a song all
about ambience and slow-building tension rather than energy and finesse. After
all, how many interesting ways are there of saying 'my wife - she's just like a
witch!'?! Find it on: the CD re-issue of 'Romany' and
curious enough a few Halloween style compilations, making this probably the
most widely heard Rickfors-era recording after 'The Baby' these days!

Roger
Cook and Roger Greenaway had been big friends with Allan Clarke, co-writing
'Long Cool Woman' together. Needing a similar hit the Rickfors-era Hollies went
back to the same source and received [211] 'If It Wasn't For The Reason That I Love You' (you
wonder what Clarke thought about all this, although he couldn't really stop his
old band from covering a song by his friends). It's a lovely song that the
1960s line-up would have done well: the grumpy lyrics are undermined by the
sheer bouncy enthusiasm of the music. Basically saying 'you're pushing me to
the limit', you know reading between the lines that the narrator is so loved-up
he would gladly do more. Rickfors was struggling to convey one emotion in
English, though, never mind two and struggles more than normal here with the fast
irregular metre of the song (although his David Crosby-like 'mm hmms' are a
delight); perhaps Terry should have sung this one instead? The Hollies turn in
a great performance though with some terrific three-way guitar battles and
another terrific middle eight ('Wish I could find a way...') that leaps out of
the record with a sudden burst of adrenalin. The Hollies were probably right to
leave this one in the vaults compared to the rest of 'Romany's sheer overall
excellence, but it's still plenty good enough to make for one of the better
songs on the impressively consistent 'Rarities' set 16 years later. Find it on: 'Rarities' (1988) and 'The Long Road Home'
(2003)

For
my money one of the greatest ever Hollie songs is the unassuming Terry
Sylvester composition [223] 'I
Had A Dream', the B-side of 'Jesus Was A Crossmaker' (making the single
something of a 'Terry' special!) The narrator has just woken up and for a
second thought he and an old flame were still together; the fact has shaken him
to the core and left him 'trying to find words to pacify my feelings of
loneliness for you'. This slow moody ballad is perfect for the Rickfors-era
Hollies, with Mikael's hazy second-language vocal perfect for the song and he's
never better than here with every syllable spot-on. While the rest of the band
play at half-speed, Tony's guitar bubbles away twice as fast, the perfect
musical depiction of the many thoughts running through his head. Terry, well
schooled in Hollie writing by now, turns in a middle eight so exquisite he
actually uses it twice, a sudden push on the accelerator as the narrator
remembers how his beloved used to look: 'Golden hair, skylined with silver
blue'. The narrator consoles himself enough to get back to sleep, muttering how
he's got 'memories', but like all good Hollie characters he'd fooling nobody:
this is a relationship that's still tremendously vivid and which will clearly
haunt him for a long time to come. Good as the A-side is, this flip should have
been the single: a powerful, emotional, cleverly made but overwhelmingly song
that's beautifully performed. Shockingly it's about the last time that Rickfors
gets to sing on a Hollie song, just at the moment when the rest of the band
have finally understood just what they can do with him in the band. The Hollies
at their best. Find it on: 'The Long Road Home'
(2003) and the CD re-issue of 'Out On The Road'

Alan
Clarke finally rejoined the band in late 1973. His first session back at Abbey
Road was understandably a key one for The Hollies who were still debating
whether to go for a 'new' sound or siomply pick up where they'd left off in
1971. The first song recorded at that session (on August 7th 1973) was 'Curly
Billy', a cowboy re-working of 'Long Cool Woman' which duly appeared on 1974
'comeback' album 'The Hollies'. The other song taped that day was [224] 'Mexico Gold', an obscure
cover story-song about a commuter getting home (and possibly smuggling
something other than love with him through customs, although it's not explicit
- it could in fact be his girlfriend's unborn baby the way the lyrics are
written). This is the sort of slightly dangerously exciting and unlawful song
in vogue in 1973 and would naturally have appeared to future Springsteen
discoverer and fan Clarke who does his typically good in-character job. The
rest of the band sound less sure after two years of being softer and more
emotional, with more space for harmonies and guitar rather than lead vocals and
harmonica, but this could easily have been a 'new' and highly lucrative avenue
for The Hollies had they chosen to explore it (it's arguably more interesting
than the poppier one they settled on while making their next record). In fact
this song - not released until 1988 - has become something of a retrospective
'hit', appearing on many Hollies compilations since and chosen by many fans as
one of their favourites. Find it on: 'Rarities'
(1988), 'The LOng Road Home' (2003) and a few other Hollies compilations
besides

A
late Hicks/Lynch collaboration - possibly left over from 'Out On The Road' and
deemed unsuitable for the Rickfors-era Hollies - [225] 'Tip Of The Iceberg' is a no-frills rock and
roller born for Allan Clarke to roar written by Tony and Kenny Lynch specially
for him (as Rickfors would not have had a chance to sing a song like this). The
song basically says that love goes deeper than surface signs - that looks count
for nothing if 'she don't come home when you're all alone - you've got the
wrong girl, man, be wise!'. An outside contender for 'The Hollies' reunion
album, it's no classic but still more interesting than a lot of that album
ended up becoming with a shuffle beat and funky guitar riff. The song just
lacks a certain something, with a sadly pedestrian middle eight this time
around ('Well she can have the cutest eyes...') that prevents it from being as
good as other songs of the era. Find it on: 'At
Abbey Road Volume Three' (1998)

A
Hollies song so obscure that even the official 30th anniversary merchandise A-Z
listing doesn't include it, [226] 'Burn Fire Burn' is another of the very earliest recordings when
Clarke rejoined the band and The Hollies played around a bit with style. This
is not unlike what The Hollies would have sounded like had Clarke been around
for the 'Out On The Road' album, with the same 'mellow firepower'. The song is
only the third (and to date last) written by Bobby and the only one written by
him alone, left unissued at the time. It's a rasther dull song that uses the
same boring metaphor of a fire for love and an unusual 'home, baby I'm home'
chorus. The melody sounds a little bit too much like 'I'm A Gonna Love You Too'
though - except for the chorus, which just sounds unfinished. Some nice Hollie
harmonies in the middle though. Find it on: The CD
Re-Issue of 'The Hollies' (1974) - alothough be warned, it doesn't appear on
all editions

At
last, after a few dodgy entries, The Hollies' excellent B-side catalogue is
back on track. [235] 'No More
Riders' is an atmosphereic Terry Sylvester song that sounds like Guns
and Roses would if only they could sing properly and is most notable for some
piercing Tony Hicks guitar, the closest The Hollies ever came to heavy metal.
The lyrics are pure prog rock though: we're on an 'empty trail' surrounded by
death and the narrator seems to be crying out for company only to find that no
one else walks this path. This may have been a bit how The Hollies were feeling
after the Rickfors years left them in the wilderness, but if this piece was
autobiographical then it's solved in the greatest way possible by being used as
the B-side of a best-selling #2 UK chart peaking single 'The Air That I
Breathe'. Find it on: 'The Hollies' (1974) (CD
Re-Issue) and 'As Bs and EPs' (2004)

Released
with great fanfare as the follow-up to 'The Air That I Breathe' and with The
Hollies returning a tried and tested source of material (Chip Taylor, who'd
written #1 hit 'I'm Alive') [236] 'Son Of A Rotten Gambler' is on paper the perfect choice for The
Hollies. It's a song that matches both the orchestral weight of 'He Ain't
Heavy' and the band's 1970s passion for protest and class songs and gives lots
of space for what makes The Hollies special: emotion, harmonies and guitar.
However there's something ever so slightly 'off' about this song - it starts on
a flat guitar note for instance, cobbles together a whole load of different
sections that don't really go together, the melody is unmemorable and the
lyrics are confusing. I think this is a song about a man doing well despite his
low-down roots as 'the son of a mill-run rotten gambler' who never had any
money spare - but the song starts as a religious spiritual where 'love is his
vision' and seems to end up with the narrator throwing all that good away to
his own gambling addiction (or is that just a flashback?) The song's attempts
to do He Ain't Heavy style universal suffrage are clearly what drew The Hollies
to this song ('Will you stand your life by his and help the boy become a
man?'), but they're just not in the same league - there's no sense of
redemption or hope on this song, just a rotten lyric about a rotten gambler and
his rotten family that leaves us feeling rotten. You'd have thought any Hollies
song would have made the charts just a few short months after 'The Air That I
Breathe' but without any real hook to latch on to, this track sank like a
stone. Even as an album track it would have been a bit of a let-down, not that
it got the chance - realising their mistake The Hollies all but excised this
track from history, removing it from most compilations (even ones that are
,meant to be 'complete' runs of singles) and dropping it from their next album
'Another Night', making it the last exclusive-to-single track until 'Soldier's
Song' in 1980. Find it on: 'At Abbey Road Volume
Three' (1998) and 'As Bs and EPs' (2004)

A
jolly, silly song with a return of Hicks' country lilt guitar 'n' banjo, [237] 'Layin' To The Music' is 'Gambler's
unremarkable B-side, this time written by Allan and Terry. The main song is
pretty basic, a tale of wanting to dance with a so-so melody written in 4/4 in
a simple key, but the middle eight is pretty memorable, with a nice
rise-and-fall melody and some excellent Hollies harmonies. The lyric is a
little disjointed though: like 'dandelion Wine' this song seems to take place
at a party where 'I'm drinking from yer shoe' (what is it with Hollies and
footwear?) and ends up with what seems like a hallucination of 'horse riders in
the sky'. How did we get from having 'itchy feet, wanna dance to the beat' to
here?! Find it on: 'At Abbey Road Volume Three'
(1998) and 'As Bs and EPs' (2004)

The
B-side to I'm Down' was a Terry Sylvester song from the 'Another Night'
sessions [238] 'Hello Lady,
Goodbye'. A catchy, poppy song about a loved one who flees away in the
night without a word, it fits nicely with that album's deeper vibe and sense of
love and loss and high production gloss (it's basically 'Lucy' but re-written
to be about divorce not death). The narrator is in denial, 'going out tonight
to get high' and waking up in the last verse to find a 'new' lady by his side,
but as all good Hollies fans know he's just saying that and even that happy
last verse finds the narrator woken up by a 'mockingbird', suggesting he isn't
telling the truth. This is a happy sounding song, though, with a lot packed
into it and some typically excellent harmonies. Find
it on: the Magic label's CD re-issue of 'Another Night'

Remember
Colin Horton-Jennings, the writer who'd dominated the credits for 'Romany' in
1972? He's back again for one last song - his last with Clarke back in the band
- on the subtle reggae calypso number [239] 'Come Down To The Shore'. Rickfors would have been
perfect for this song, oozing the sort of warmth the track needs (oblivious of
his Swedish background!), alas Clarke isn't quite the right man for the job
although his harmonica puffing is still pretty good. Perhaps an experiment too
far for The Hollies, this song's tale of leaving the city life to hire an
island and pleading with his lover to come down too never really registers, a
poor copy of their own 'My Island'. Sensibly left off the 'Another Night' LP
(it was recorded two days after 'Sandy') this was nevertheless a welcome find
that had never been leaked or bootlegged like some of the other Hollies
rarities of the time and is worth haring just for the typically stunning
three-piece vocals. Find it on: 'At Abbey Road
Volume Three' (1998) and the Magic CD re-issue of 'Another Night'

The
closest The Hollies ever came to writing a 'torch-waver', the uplifting [250] 'Samuel' is Abba's 'Fernando'
by another name - a Spanish song about the narrator imploring his friend Samuel
to make his peace with a brother who once wronged him, complete with a flamenco
guitar flourish. Some of the lyrics are a little cloying and this Clarke
original sounds much more like the sort of 'poppy' things Allan was doing on
his solo records than the period Hollies tracks, presumably left in the vaults
because it didn't really sit right with the 'Another Night' recordings. However
there's a lot of space for Hicks to coax some fascinating sounds out of his
guitar (which sounds like a sitar once again) and there's a classic Eurovision
style singalong Hollie chorus as the band club together to 'light a candle
Samuel' and even throw in a couple of memorable key changes towards the end of
the song, making the song get higher and higher and more and more urgent. Find it on: 'At Abbey Road Volume Three' (1998)

[263] 'Here In My Dreams' is a beautiful ballad that
would have enhanced 'Write On' no end. Finally released as part of 'Hollies
Rarities' in 1988, it presumably got left off the album when the band came up
with enough material of their own, but it's a shame: this is one of the better
Hollies covers of the 1970s, building up from nothing to a real power ballad in
the second half. The track was presumably written for The Hollies, with old
friend Colin Horton-Jennings and new friend Pete Arenson (who will be the
band's keyboardist for a spell in the 1980s) clubbing together for a song that
really fits The Hollies' strengths. Clarke is always good at love-struck
narrators and his sense of awe and emotion on love at first sight in the
opening verse is a delight. The shimmering ethereal quality of the song (with
Arneson doing double duty on piano and organ) is right up The Hollies' street
too, before being dismissed by a typical Hollies singalong chorus, albeit one
that always sounded slightly unfinished to me ('Because in me, to believe...I
have touched, I have seen!' - it doesn't even rhyme!) Still, generally speaking
this is more than up to the materiual of the period (it's better than almost
anything on 'Write On' - 'Love Is The Thing' being the exception) and another
of those songs first released on 'Rarities' where you went 'why the hell didn't
this song come out at the time?' Find it on:
''Rarities' (1988) and 'The Long Road Home' (2003)

[285] 'Lovin' You Ain't Easy' was perhaps a ballad too far for
the'5317704' album and dropped from the record in favour of other material. It's
curiously un-Hollies like: Clarke sings solo along to a piano (which sounds as
if it's played by Pete Wingfield) for the first half of the song and it only
really gets going when Terry joins for the second verse, with the rest of the
band joining in for the third and final one. The melody sounds suspiciously
like 'The Long Way' from Clarke's 'I've Got Time' LP, while the lyrics seems
confused - it's a list of faults without the expected '...but I love you
anyway' chorus the song appears to be building up to, instead telling us how
good the couple are 'as a team' then things go wrong. There isn't even a guitar
solo to lift the song. Bah! Find it on: 'At Abbey
Road Volume Three' (1998)

[286]
'Sanctuary' was also
dropped from '5317704' when that album appeared to be over-run by ballads. In
this case, though, they absolutely dropped the wrong song: Clarke's regular co-author
Gary Benson's solo song about 'being forced down a road where I can't go' is
one of his best and certainly one of his 'real'ist. The song uses the old
Hollies trick of taking a mournful verse where everything sounds hopeless and
lifting it with a hopeful chorus that shows off everything that's great about
The Hollies full of hope, determination and love (it's the same trick as 'I'm
Alive' in fact, but the stakes are even higher this time around). We haven't
heard the 'real' Clarke for a while, after several albums where the
Clarke-Sylvester-Hicks writing team have been clamping down on their individual
personalities for some form of band sound.
[229] 'Don't Let Me Down' was the last to be exact, but suddenly Clarke
seems to have had a creative spurt which stretches through 531's lone band
original ('Satelite 3') into his two 'comeback' solo albums released through
1978-79. Allan will in fact re-record this song for the last of these, 'The
Only Ones', after The Hollies passed on it, where it sounds like even more of a
nervous breakdown set to words, slower and angrier with a chorus that isn't so
much power pop as brief prelude to more pain. The Hollies' outtake is better,
if only because their thrilling harmonies on the chorus make such a worthy
counterpart to Clarke's lost and lonely verses, providing the typical Hollies
uplift that makes it all better. Hicks also provides another towering guitar
solo which flies up the heavens with such an eager force that it almost knocks
the rest of the song flying. The result, in either version, is one of the
strongest Hollie originals of the second half of the 1970s, a singalong ballad
everyone can relate to that's one of the last of their 'great' songs offering
hope and realism in equal measure. A sanctuary indeed: how this got left off
the 'calculator' album is a mystery (by that album's standards it's almost a
rocker, which makes the 'official' explanation that there were 'too many
ballads' one of them had to go look a bit silly). Find
it on: 'Rarities' (1988) and 'The Long Road Home' (2003)

In
November 1979, following the release of '5317704', The Hollies decided to work
with head Womble Mike Batt, whose working practices divided a band who'd
clearly been in trouble for a few years now. Working only on his own songs,
Batt drilled The Hollies into working on their instinctive vocals over and over
to the point where they no longer sounded 'natural' - although on the plus side
all three songs are amongst the best The Hollies recorded in the era and
stretch their sound in a way that the band hadn't been for a few years now,
disco aside. [297] 'Soldier's
Song' was chosen as the single and is easily the best of the trio, a
moody atmospheric anti-war song set in the dim and distant past (but the lyrics
are ambiguous enough to be English Civil War, American Revolution, even French
Revolution and anywhere in between, although the amount of farm-houses suggest
the former). Clarke excels in the role of a seventeen year old lad packed off
to war without really thinking about the consequences. War makes him grow up,
where he 'ages ten years that day and died a thousand deaths', losing his
childishness along with his virginity in the house of a comforting stranger -
only to find the next day that his 'drunken young compatriots' have burnt her
house down with her inside. The girl dies in his arms and the soldier is never
the same again. It's all very fitting for a band who protested against the
Vietnam War earlier in their career and a much more 'adult' take than
'Soldier's Dilemma' and 'Promised Land', great as both songs are. A stunning
orchestral arrangement makes the best use of an orchestra on a Hollies song so
far, which starts off pompous and then becomes more 'earthy', with a swell of
such emotion even Clarke's voice struggles to match it. Hicks turns in another
stunning guitar solo too while a Bobby Elliott drum roll sets the scene on
things. Only Terry and Bernie, on their penultimate Hollies recording sessions,
get little to do. A word of warning though: sadly the definitive arrangement of
this song, resurrected by the live Hollies in the 1990s with Clarke still in
the band and the keyboards doing a good job at re-creating the orchestral part,
was never recorded (except on bootleg - the closest you can hear is the 1983
Nash reunion on 'Archive Alive' but even that's far from the best). After ten years
of mulling things over The Hollies really perfect this song: they slow it down,
make proper contrasts between the intimacy of the romantic chorus and the sheer
hell of the choruses and instead of playing cameo parts the guitar and drums
stab right to the heart of the song, backing Clarke at his best as he all but
yells the resolving verse. By contrast the released single version of
'Soldier's Song' comes off as a mere demo, played far too fast and just that
bit too sterile. As with the other Batt recordings, his involvement is
something of a mixed blessing, providing strong material but no idea of what to
do with it. In case you were wondering, like me, what the B-side was by the way
it was a straight re-issue of 'Russian Roulette' track 'Draggin' My Heels'. Find the studio
version on: some Hollies compilations and 'The Long Road Home' (2003)

[298]
'If The Lights Go Out'
was most famously re-recorded by the Nash era Hollies for inclusion on 'What
Goes Around...'. However the ever-so-slightly different version was first
recorded in 1981 and released as a flop single. The differences are minimal:
there's no Nash, obviously, with Terry much harder to hear, there's a curious
reverb/echo repeat of 'and if the...' and the guitar-keyboard solo duel is much
more defined. Neither version is exactly great but the 1983 version is perhaps
the slightly stronger of the two. Find this version
on: 'At Abbey Road Volume Three' (1998) and 'The Long Road Home' (2003)

[297]
'Can't Lie No More' is
the third and long-'missing' part of the Hollies' trilogy of songs with Mike
Batt, recorded at the same November 1979 sessions as the other two songs but
left unreleased until for over twenty years. You can kind of see why - its' not
as memorable as the other two and is much more 'normal' for pop material in the
1980s (it's very much like Clarke's 'The Only Ones' album actually, though not
quite as good). A slow burn and a killer pop chorus ought to make this more of
a Hollies song, but the slow drawn out opening is just a little too slow and
the switch to full-on harmony mode a little too obvious by their standards.
Clarke isn't really suited to the song either - he's having to build up to
telling his lifelong partner he needs to leave, but the lyrics don't give him
the range of guilt or tenderness the song deserves and we're back in 'Sorry
Suzanne' territory again with Clarke spending three whole minutes apologising
(although this track is better I'm pleased to say!) Find
it on: 'The Long Road Home' (2003)

Back
in the early 1980s DJs in clubs hit on a new idea: linking up a series of songs
so that listeners could get the 'thrill' of a song they remembered without
gettijng bored. Everybody was releasing 'compilation' singles linked by a heavy
then-modern drumbeat - even The Beatles thanks to the soundalike 'Stars Of 45'
(an ironic name given that most of their singles were released as 12"
'supersized' records!) [300] 'Holliedaze' did better than
most and caught both band and label on the hop. Overseen, briefly, by Tony and
Bobby it features a remixed edit of the singles 'Just One Look' 'Here I Go
Again' 'I'm Alive' 'I Can't Let Go' 'Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress' 'Bus
Stop' and 'Carrie Anne' - basically all the big hits that come with a
distinctive beat and a 'walking pace' rhythm. The single was popular enough to
make #28 in the UK charts, the best The Hollies had managed in seven years,
although the result is not different enough to excite longterm collectors or
enough like the old favourites to please newbie purists existing in a kind of
mid 1980s hollow hell. Clever title, though and a welcome opportunity for the
original band to reunite for Top Of The Pops to promote the single (yes even
Eric and Graham although Don Rathbone didn't get a call...) Find it on: only found on the original single I'm afraid

[301]
'Holliepops' was the
B-side of the above release and features exactly the same idea, this time using
that relentless disco beat over old recordings of 'Stay' 'Yes I Will' 'Look
Through Any Window' 'On A Carousel' 'Jennifer Eccles' 'Listen To Me' and 'He
Ain't Heavy He's My Brother' (which just sounds wrong with drumming!) Oh and
this time the title is awful! Find it on: only found
on the original single I'm afraid

The
second song due to be re-recorded by the Nash-reunion Hollies, [302a] 'Take My Love and Run' is
another song with a slightly paranoid air about it. A song about a pair of
lovers going their separate ways, it pairs some rather incomprehensible lyrics
with a genuinely catchy chorus and a less catchy 'waoh waoh a woaha' hook that
sounds like the spirit of Peter Howarth 20 years early. This earlier version of
the song differs from the album mainly because of an extended finale which
repeats the chorus another couple of extra times and has a short extra section
where the chorus is sung by Clarke to a minor key for a change while the rest
of the Hollies sing a moody 'aaah!' behind him. The album version also has a
bit more oompah about it somehow, with less time spent doodling on synthesisers
and more time on the harmonies. Find this version on
'At Abbey Road Volume Three' (1998) and 'The Long Road Home' (2003)

Believe
it or not, [303] 'Driver'
is The Hollies' first instrumental in twelve years and very different from the
last time when Bernie went all classical and lush. Basically a Tony Hicks
guitar riff in search of a home, it's a chirpy multi-tracked piece that has a
great guitar sound (double tracked and echoey as if there's a whole orchestra
of them) but lacks a decent song to go with the sound. It's unclear why the
band didn't just add vocals to this piece - it doesn't really cry out to be
left alone as an instrumental and in fact gets downright dull during the
lengthy verse sections. Find it on: You'll be lucky!
This song first appeared as the B-side to 'Take My Love and Run' and is one of
the few Hollie recordings to never be added to CD!

The only
recording made with short lived harmony singer John Miles in the band, [322] 'Carrie' should have been the
start of a whole new Hollies sound. The most commercial thing the band had made
in years, Miles' own 'Carrie' sounds like an up-date to what happened to the
narrator of 'Carrie Anne' going through difficulties at an older age. 'Waited
so long, no one to care, why did you keep me waiting?' goes the verse
considering a split before a happy-go-lucky chorus puts all the drama behind
it, held in check by a classic Hollies trick of repeating the urgent,
aggressive guitar part every time the song gets too happy, the perfect summary
of the narrator's confused state of mind. The result isn't a Hollies
masterpiece by any means (the lyrics switch between contentment and anger so
quickly you get dizzy), but it's more than good enough to release as a single,
with Coates nicely filling in the 'harmony hole' that the Hollies have been
lacking since 1983. Amazingly EMI rejected a song that, if not a guaranteed
hit, was going to do as well as any Hollies single released in 1987 and the
world had to wait another year when it became both the first track on the
'Rarities' set and a nicely strong B-side to the #1 re-issue of 'He Ain't Heavy
He's My Brother', a nice trailer for what The Hollies had been up to in the
intervening 19 years which deserved to have got more members of the public interested
in the next few Hollie singles. Find it on:
'Rarities' (1988)

The
B-side from the only single selected from the 'What Goes Around' LP, [311] 'Musical Pictures' has many
things in common with its parent LP. The track is a slushy ballad written by
the band's keyboard whizz Paul Bliss (like half of that album) and lacks a
strong hook or anything to differentiate it from anything else clogging up the
charts by 1983. The track even starts with the same opening four note phrase as
'Someone Else's Eyes' ('Don't say goodbye...'), which might be why it was
dropped from the LP. It's also unbelievably 'wet' : the narrator longs to know
that he's 'connecting' with someone and 'getting through' and can only do so by
writing a song; perhaps Paul had spent too long studying one of his Hollie
keyboard predecessors Elton John as this song is far more in his style
(specifically 'Your Song'). However, while no masterpiece as a song the
recording has two things going for it which most of the album didn't. The first
is that with just a piano and drum part and a very quiet orchestral part and
guitar way in the background this could just conceivably be by The Hollies of
old (well, it could until the bonkers keyboard solo at least, which sounds like
a cat blowing through a tin whistle whilst being made to take a bath). Also the
lack of 'novelties' in the song put the emphasis firmly on the vocals at long
last, with this by far the best place to 'study' the 1983 reunion Hollies sound
without distractions - they sound very good too, with Hicks accommodating a slight
shift downwards to better blend with Graham compared to Terry. Find it on: the CD re-issue of 'What Goes Around...'

[312] 'Let Her Go Down' is one of The Hollies' most obscure releases,
the B-side of 'Stop! In The Name Of Love' but released only in New Zealand and
thus with Nash on vocals for the last time. It's another of The Hollies' moody
1980s pop songs that don't really stick in the memory, that bit too slow as The
Hollies sing about not letting life events drag you under. Even the slightly
more memorable chorus is rather average though with crashing synth chords and
some rather over-cooked Bobby Elliott drumming. Find
it on: 'The Long Road Home' (2003) and the CD re-issue of 'What Goes Around...'

A
sweet little song, [313] 'You Gave Me Strength' is
another of those 1980s recordings that always gets forgotten. While far from
the best ballads The Hollies ever had to offer, at least this one sounds more
fitting to their style, with Clarke using the same 'whisper-to-shout' direction
as classics like I'm Alive', some lovely harmonies and excellent guitar twirls.
The melody is rather good too, more memorable than most similar material
despite being played on a forgettable synth that sounds like a digital watch.
Only the lyrics really let this one down, recalling 'Sanctuary' without being
anywhere near as heartfelt or profound. Unusually, this song was kept in the
vaults for two years before seeing the light of day even though its arguably a
cut above the other singles released in between; had this song stayed put just
a little longer and been released on 'Rarities' it may yet have had the status
of a 'lost classic' as opposed to just being 'lost'. Released
as the B-side of 'This Is It', the song is another of the small handful of
Hollies recordings still missing on CD.

For
my ears the most deserving Hollies flop single of the 1980s was the
slow-burning torch ballad [314] 'Too Many Hearts Get Broken'. A collaboration between Clarke, Mick
Leeson and Peter Vale, this is both very Hollies and at the same time a
departure for them: a slow passionate piano ballad not unlike 'Bottom From The
Top' that's full of twinkly contemporary sounding synthesisers, it sounds
impressively powerful compared to everything else around at the time. The
Hollies should have been the perfect band for the 1980s, a decade that praised
pop higher than most other genres and deep pop with 'hidden' messages at that.
While The Hollies don't often manage to get the combination of 'their' sound
and that of the world around them too right, this is one of the great
exceptions. The band use their old trick of 'worried' verses and a glorious
'All You Need Is Love' style singalong chorus that helps put everything right.
There's even a storming middle eight just like the old days that covers one of
the greatest key changes in this book ('Or love will leave you cold
as...ice!!!!') The Hollies harmonies are excellent, doing that bit more than
they need to ('Too many hearts get brohhhh-o-o-o-oken'), Bobby has fun seeing
how loud he can play without ruining the song, new boy Ian Parker** plays some of the most atmospheric keyboard
parts of any Hollie recording and Clarke soars with good material to sing at
last. Everyone clearly believes in this song in a way they don't always for the
other 1980s/90s singles and B-sides; why this wasn't a hit is down to how out
of fashion the band sadly were in 1985 and how mean EMI were with their
publicity money. Had this song come out 20 years earlier, right at the heart of
the Hollies' run of success, I have a sneaking suspicion it would have been
many people's favourite. Find it on: 'The Long Road
Home' (2003)

If
the A-side was going for 'Air That I Breathe' style slow-burning passion,
B-side [315] 'You're All
Woman!' returns yet again to the trick of 'Long Cool Woman'. A chirpy
sultry song about a woman whose 'hotter than hell, but cooler than ice!', it's
the most contemporary song The Hollies had done in years. Ian Parker's**
multiple keyboards weave together a lattice of backing tracks that use staccato
rhythms for most of the verse (and leave Clarke singing one syllable at a time
'Breath-less! With Ex-pec-ta-tion!') before uniting into a sea of Hollies
harmonies in the chorus. In truth this song runs out of ideas once we hit the
chorus - we simply go round the houses again - but the opening minute is one of
the most striking The Hollies ever made and is like the good old days of
Hollies B-sides which always went somewhere new and daring. Good luck finding this one, which is one of the rarer Hollies
recordings out there, originally released as the B-side to both 'Too Many
Hearts Get Broken' and 'This Is It'

[316]
'Laughter Turns To Tears'
is another better-than-average stab at a pop single by the 1980s Hollies. The
song sounds remarkably what The Stone Roses will become even though they don't
exist in this time period yet - well, not on record anyway (perhaps as a fellow
Mancunian band The Hollies saw them at a local gig or perhaps it was just a
sound in the air in the city). There's a sort of breathless pace to this song
even though the slightly hazy dreamy backing makes it all sound as if its
playing slowly. This Bill Bremner/Will Birch is on a very Hollies theme though:
the closeness between good times and bad and the fact that the 'inner' you
might not always be what the world perceives it as (though it doesn't mention
clowns or make-up, it sounds at one with other tracks such as 'Mr Heartbreaker'
and 'Harlequin'). Like a lot of 1980s Hollies recordings, though, this track is
missing something - the chorus doesn't announce it's arrival, it just sort of
appears, while the chugging backing doesn't break a sweat throughout. Nice
Hicks sitar-guitar hybrid work in the background though. Find it on: originally a bonus track on the 12" version of
'Too Many Hearts Get Broken', this song also appeared on 'The Long Road Home'
(2004)

Technically
speaking [317] 'Hard To Forget'
shouldn't be in this part of the book: though intended as the band's lone
single of 1986 the release got cancelled at the last minute and this slightly
better than average 1980s song has suprisingly never appeared on any
retrospective or compilation. However I'm including it here because the single
was cancelled so late on in the day that The Hollies actual did more publicity
for it than usual, plugging away on a whole load of British, German and New
Zealand TV stations, so that many fans consider it part of the 'canon' (there's
a particularly fun TV-AM interview where Clarke and Hicks have great fun
punning and winding up presenter Anne Diamond). Interestingly they add in that
clip that the song was 'only finished a couple of days ago' and 'the record
compay haven't heard it yet'. What did EMI object to? This is prime 80s Hollies
with whopping big banks of synthesisers, a catchy 'wah-oh' chorus and more
hooks than a pair of psychedelic curtains - but with a touch of real emotion
hidden behind the lyrics (read between the lines, as Dear Eloise would put it).
The narrator tries so hard to get on with his life and embrace pastures new -
but it's all to no avail as he's stuck inside the same place that used to be so
happy and with only his missing love on his mind. The song sports a
particularly strong middle eight ('I can wait around forever holding out for
you...this is now way to live!' ending in an a capella 'freezeframe' on the
word 'forget' that's stunning, the best use of Hollie harmonies in years. Al in
all a much overlooked song that probably wouldn't have done any better in the
charts than the last few singles but deserved to sell well to the loyal Hollies
fanbase. Find it on: Nothing!

With
their last single rejected, The Hollies retreated to an old technique of using
a young writer who was currently 'in'. Maldwyn Pope is best known for his songs
about rural Welsh village life even though his two songs for The Hollies are
very much catered for the 'international' pop market. [318] 'This Is It' is kind of OK,
with dated synths and clattered drums and without much of a tune, but it does
at least have space for a nice cascading Hollies 'round' of harmonies and a
vaguely interesting lyric so it's automatic ahead of some other Hollies singles
of the decade. It's another song about a break-up - but while the narrator is
upset at seeing his loved one go he's more angry with himself for not seeing it
coming, asking 'how was I the last to know?' Hicks plays a grungier, gruffer
guitar part than he has in a while - perhaps in contrast to the rather twee
keyboard backing. Find it on: 'The Long Road Home'
(2003)

[319]
'Reunion Of The Heart' -
another Pope song - was released hot on the heels of 'This Is It', just two
months later in March 1987 - the shortest gap between new Hollies releases
since 1976! Alas though, far from being like the good ol' days, this is another
single that has the band once again unsure of their 'Hollies style' and
desperate to sound like everyone else in the hope of getting a hit. If you
remember this era, all echoey synthesisers, booming drums that sounds like
cannons and twee sentiment that sounds like its rolled out of the
Stick-Aitken-Waterman production line, then you'll know where this drippy
ballad is coming from. Both Clarke and Hicks cope well, the former doing his
best to sound sincere and the latter adding a blistering guitar solo, much more
like a Hendrix rumble than his usual sparse clear tones, but the song is too darn
slow and simply doesn't go anywhere. 'Hear you calling my name for a reunion!'
cries the narrator, perhaps returning to the scene of 1973's classic B-side 'I
had A Dream', but this song doesn't have anything else to tell us bar the
info-dump in the first verse that 'you picked me up when I was living down in
Egypt'. And what does 'reunion of the heart' even mean anyway? Is it a heart
that's only 'whole' when the couple are together? A patch up of a broken heart?
Or a heart transplant? Sadly the song isn't interesting enough to care about
that much and failed to chart in every single country it was released in - even
Germany. A re-issue of 'Too Many Hearts Get Broken' was the B-side, by the way.
Find it on: 'Long Road Home' (2004)

Sadly
not the Ben E King classic covered by John Lennon - or the Rod Taylor song from
Allan Clarke's fourth solo album 'I've Got Time' - [320] 'Stand By Me' is a noisy and
far too 1980s (even at the time) pop song written specially for the band by
five (it really took a quintet people to write this?!) German pop songwriters.
Released only in Germany, even there the track didn't sell too well, perhaps
because it lacks so many of The Hollies' usual sounds and smacks a little too
much of desperation. Hicks throws in another good solo and Clarke, though
singing uncomfortably high, at least sounds like he means it but Bobby's drums
sound suspiciously like they're electronic to me and the synthesiser touches
are intrusive. As for the lyrics, you kinda know what they are going to be even
before you hear them: 'Stand by me and give me all your kisses, stand by me and
give me all your loving...' The Hollies' previously unassailable pop crown is
beginning to look awfully unstable all of a sudden... Find
it on: 'The Long Road Home' (2003)

Clarke's
last solo writing credit for the band is the rather odd ballad [321] 'For What It's Worth, I'm Sorry'.
Released as the B-side to 'Stand By Me' (and then only in Germany), it's
another of the more obscure Hollies song in this book, an apology from someone
who knows they've done wrong but isn't quite sure why. Given The Hollies' habit
of writing about their circumstances in song, it could be a teary apology for
not releasing material before, with the half-sigh of 'Write On' apparent in the
weary chorus line 'maybe it was meant to be this way'. The track uses the old tried and tested
formula of a downbeat verse and upbeat chorus but the join between the two is
less subtle than usual and while Clarke does a good job at conveying emotion
that isn't really there the rest of the band sound less sure. Of all the
Hollies' 1980s recordings, this is the one that falls most into the trappings
of the era - pretty packaging like synthesisers, keyboard-strings and electric
drums covering up a lyric that by their standards is merely average. The next
year's recordings will all be better and feature more of the 'Hollies' sound.
Thank goodness. Find it on: Nowhere unless you're
lucky enough to live in Germany, where it can be purchased as part of 'Up
Front: The Coconut Collection', a compilation of the band's 1980s non-album
singles (2008)

Nils
Lofgren is a fellow member of the AAA. Long regarded as one of the world's
greatest supporting musicians (to Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Ringo among
others), Nils' solo work is even more impressive (while slightly inconsistent).
[323] 'Shine Silently'
is the closest he ever came to a 'hit' record - the song didn't chart either
side of the Atlantic but it's appeared belatedly in a few film and TV
soundtracks and is heard relatively frequently on the radio: and so it should
be, a charming and very Nils-song offering support and singing about the
healing properties of love, it's a great song and a natural choice for The
Hollies. Lofgren's version is rather muted, fitting for a song about a light
that's hidden under a bushel - the very fact that a song this catchy can be
sung with so little drama is part of its charm. Needing a hit, The Hollies
sensibly decide to dress it up, though, turning it into a powerhouse singalong
with a neat guitar riff and drenching everything in uplifting Hollies
harmonies. The result is one of their more charming recordings of the period,
inhibited only by a rather booming drum sound that doesn't fit either the song
or Bobby's abilities. Fans of this track might also like to look out for the
original vinyl 12" single which, like many releases of it's day, came with
an 'extended mix' which pushes the song from a workable four minutes to a
whopping six and a half. It's actually rather good as extended 12" singles
go, with several repeats of the chorus and a bit of extra keyboard work. By the
way, the co-writer credit 'Richard Wagner' is not a reference to the German
composer but to Lofgren's occasional writing partner.

[324]
'Your Eyes' is the
B-side of 'Shine Silently and features many of the same strengths and
weaknesses: a catchy chorus that goes on a bit too long and a nicely powerful
group performance but using very 1980s instruments . However where it loses out
on 'Silently' is that it doesn't seem as if there's any 'real' emotion in the
song which is all rather bland, even Hick's guitar solo unusually. That's a
shame because this German-written song is actually very Hollies: it's 'I'm
Alive; in reverse in effect, the narrator feeling drained every time he looks
into his lover's eyes and realises 'my love is fading away in your eyes'. A
full three repeats of the already lengthy chorus at the very end of the song
also rather torpedoes your patience long before you get to the finale. However
unlike some 1980s Hollies songs this one is at least rescuable and is another
one of these period recordings that deserves to be much better known than it is
('Your Eyes' is still missing on CD, for instance, which is shocking when you
remember how many hundreds of compilations repeat the same old track listings
over and over). Find it on: Nowhere except the
B-side of the 'Shine Silently' single I'm afraid - and then only in Germany!

After
covering semi-famous songs by everyone else, The Hollies went back to one of
their old classics in search of a hit. In the end the 'Coconut' version of
[187b] 'Long Cool Woman In A
Black Dress' - recorded in Germany's Coconut Studios - went unheard of
by anyone except the Germans again anyway and wasn't one of their bigger
success stories even there. Perhaps that's because what worked so well over
three minutes and sounded so fresh in 1971 is pulled out of all shape to fit
six minutes here and no longer sounds quite as distinctive and original with so
many period trappings poured over it. Clarke still has his voice intact in this
period and near-enough matches the original: however removing the distinctive
guitar riff to the keyboards for the most part (with Hicks and Clarke's twin
guitars adding flashes of colour rather than carrying the song) is a major
mistake: the effect is like blaring a spotlight onto the mysterious Long Cool
Woman who fits the shadows of the original must better. Find it on: The Coconut Collection', assuming you're German and have a
record shop with a strong stock of obscure 1980s compilation albums

Though
'I'm Down' had flopped badly as a single, it had impressed many people and been
taken up as a sort-of 'anthem' by a few orphanages across England who had so
few other songs on the theme of adoption to go on anyway. The Hollies were thus
a natural band to ask when ITV wanted a theme song to go with their documentary
series about the amount of children in foster care who didn't have a family.
Clarke and his old songwriting partner Gary Benson then dusted off their rusty
pens and wrote their first song together since 1980 - and the first Hollies
original with their name on it since '5317704'. [325] 'Find Me A Family' has mixed results - it's all
too obviously written to fit the bill rather than from the heart as per 'I'm
Down', with the 1980s 'sparkly' synth sounding childish, a curiously atonal
chorus ('Find me a famileeeeeee!') and some clunky lyrics that sound like a
charity single ('It's just a breath away') set against some genuinely inspired
lyrics and a lovely rise-and-fall tune. Generally speaking the first half of
the song - the part used on the opening credits on the series - is the best,
Clarke putting himself in the position of an orphaned child scared of a world
that's changed so fast' and trying to hold on to something normal - only when
the song gets all new age and full of 'new beginnings' does the song end up
sounding less sincere. However their heart was in the right place and 'Find Me
A Family', while rejected by some of the band as a 'downer', is actually just
right for The Hollies in 1989, mixing their past two styles of grinning
enthusiasm and heartfelt sympathy. It deserved to do better, repeating 'I'm
Down's fate of missing the charts entirely despite receiving some nice notices
by reviewers who'd forgotten all about The Hollies. Much of the series can be
seen on Youtube at the time of writing by the way - and rather good it is too. Find it on: 'At Abbey Road Volume Three' (1998) and 'The
Long Road Home' (2003)

One
last collaboration between Clarke and Hicks almost fools us into thinking this
is like old times. Whilst very much a fun B-side rather than a 'proper' career
path, [326] 'No Rules'
sounds the way The Hollies should have sounded for the past 20-odd songs on
this list: Clarke's wordy vocals come over a nicely grungy Tony Hicks guitar
part (a full year before the grunge explosion) and a Bobby Elliott drum pattern
that turns from quiet to energetic in the twinkle of an eye. 'No Rules' isn't
really about fighting against the system: it's a song that really should be
called 'no responsibilities' - the narrator doesn't want to be tied down and
isn't interested in solving the problems of others because 'I've got plenty of
my own'. Inconsequential but fun. Find it on: 'At
Abbey Road Volume Three' (1998)

Yikes
The Hollies have dropped the ball by the point of [327] 'Baby Come Back', a hideous pop song that
sounds like the sort of thing Herman's Hermits would do on a reunion album if
they still had an audience who wanted them to get back together. The drums are
artificial, the keyboard riff sounds like a doorbell and even those Hollie
harmonies sound lumpy and wooden, whilst Clarke sounds demented trying to
pretend he's a teenager again. Only six years ago the band were still doing
work of the importance of 'Soldier's Song' and as recently as a year earlier
were still making superior adult pop songs like 'Too Many Hearts Get Broken'.
How did they get quite so desperate quite so fast? Sensing that The Hollies'
time had passed EMI elected to release this single only in Germany where the
band's fanbase was still strong - which spared them a few blushes at home at
least. However better is yet to come, right round the corner - few hearing this
song and watching it sink like a stone would have guessed that The Hollies
would have a number one hit before another year had passed. Find it on: Nowhere I'm afraid, unless you live in German
and own the original single

Back
in 1989 the British news was full of the Hillsborough disaster in which several
Liverpool Football Club fans died when a stand collapsed at the Nottingham
Football Club of that name (96 people died with over 700 injured). At the time
many were accused of bringing the drama on themselves for misbehaving; 30 years
on inquests and appeals have seen 'the truth' blown open: the police were at
fault and delayed medical intervention to cover their own backs. The fall-out
has been extreme, especially around Merseyside where to this day buying a copy
of 'The Sun' newspaper will cause a tirade about how badly fans were treated by
the media coverage of the day (which makes a change from us local's tirades
about how awful a rag it is). Many Liverpool bands took part in various charity
fundraisers/spin-off singles to show support, but the ripples went much
further. Overcoming the usual Liverpool vs Manchester feuding, Tony Hicks
penned his own tribute to the fallen victims. [328] 'Hillsborough' duly appeared as one of the
band's rarer B-sides only in Germany where it must have confused the hell out
of fans there, a fact which speaks volumes - had The Hollies wanted to they'd
have almost certainly had a top ten hit with a song that mentioned
'Hillsborough' by name; instead they tucked this track away as a B-side only
the faithful would ever get to hear. In truth, it's not one of Tony's best:
while musically sound, he misses the touch of a collaborator on the lyrics
(from Allan and Terry and Graham to Kenny Lynch, Tony's always worked best in a
pairing) and in truth could have been about any unfortunate disaster: 'Why must
we take this guilt and shame? Who really
cares who takes the blame? Underneath we're all the same' Hicks sings, one of
the few people of the time brave enough to stand up to the media coverage of
the day and back the football fans wrongly labelled as 'hooligans' by a media
heavily leaned on by the police (who were really at fault). The opening is
rather icky though: he sees the love of his life and before he can say anything
the land he's on begins to crumble, making 'the first time I saw you' 'the last
time I saw you'. The lines about 'little angels' being 'greeted by friends down
the line' is also a bit Derek Acorah: whose to say that everyone of the
hundreds of men women and children who died all had someone close who'd passed
over first? Still, Hicks' heart is in the right place and compared to most of
the godawful covers of 'Ferry Cross The Mersey' and 'You'll Never Walk Alone'
this song at least shows a bit of care and heart, rather than an attempt to
cash-in on a tragedy and get in the papers (though, obviously, not The Sun
who'd caused most of the Hillsborough furore in the first place). Find it on: only ever released as the B-side of 'Baby Come
Back', sadly this song has been harder to track down than 'the truth' of what
happened in Hillsborough that day and has yet to appear on CD.

With
'Shine Silently' so popular (if still a slow seller), The Hollies turned to
another song by a name then on the fringes of success which maybe hadn't been
milked dry of all emotion. Prince's [329a and b] 'Purple Rain' is an odd recording in his hands,
recorded when he was still Prince and not a squiggle: despite being the title
track of his 'breakthrough' LP, Prince tends to treat the song as a
slow-burning ballad about a friendship coming to an end after an unwanted night
of love. Prince's version barely moves off the riff, without all his usual OTT
drama and power. The Hollies put all that back in, transforming 'Purple Rain'
from a slow blues about a relationship that's never likely to happen into a
typical Hollies single that takes a sad song and makes everything better. The
Hollies crackle with electricity throughout this song, from Clarke's
slow-burning vocal (which gets lighter and happier each verse) to one of Hicks'
most blistering guitar solos which gives the song the release it craves. Even
the sound effects are spot-on, a sudden burst of thunder at the end that really
adds to the song. The band also sensibly decided to record this song live on
their 1990 tour (when the Parker-Stiles-Coates line-up was at its best) rather
than in the studio, giving it that extra frisson of energy and raw power. 'The
Long Road Home' box set revealed the 'original' plan: a studio take that ever
so nearly but not quite captures the same atmosphere, with slightly more piano and
a slightly faster tempo. This version is mighty fine too, but the released live
single version has an extra bit of magic added from somewhere. The result was
never going to trouble the charts - without a 'proper' record deal The Hollies
released it as a cassette-only single available solely at concerts - but it
deservedly became the most talked about Hollies song of the 1990s, an example
of everything they could still do so well. Find the
;original' version on a few Hollies compilations staying with 'The 309th
Anniversary Collection' and the 'earlier' outtake on 'The Long Road Home'
(2003)

As
if to consolidate that The Hollies were back on track, the band came up with
two original songs for the doubly generous B-side (this single was sold as a
cassette remember and 'Purple Rain' is a blooming long song so it took two
songs to go with it). Tony's singalong [330] 'Naomi' - written with son Paul who will go on to be
big news at Abbey Road and work on almost every modern Beatles project starting
with 'Anthology' - is particularly strong with a catchy calyspo beat that
sounds like a 'happy' version of 'We're Through' if you can imagine such a
thing, with the narrator desperate to get back with his 'Nai-ee-oh-ah-mi'.
Brief Hollie Dave Carey (he'll only last the year) really makes his mark with a
great synth riff that bounces into what's quite a dark and dramatic song as if
a conga line have just walked into shot during a news bulletin - and yet this
once the incongruity works quite nicely. This is a song about the unexpected
you see, about the narrator's 'I'm Alive' style shock that love really does
exist and isn't just a fairytale - and his equal shock when he's dumped without
warning. Though this song arguably features more 80s gubbins than the entries
before it, there are still enough oh so Hollie moments within to make it work,
such as the harmonies lingering on the word 'awaaaaaaaay' and hovering in mid
air for one last glorious burst of that Hollies optimism that tomorrow is a new
day and everything will work itself out. They should have saved this one for
the 'next' single - it's plenty good enough. I still don't understand why a
crowd of people suddenly start shrieking and taking a giant in-take of breath
mid-way through the song though: has Naomi just had a wardrobe malfunction or
something? Find it on: Grrrr nothing, unless you saw
The Hollies in concert and bought the 'Purple Rain' cassette single as a
souvenir!

The
other B-side was [331] 'Two
Shadows', Clarke's last original song ever recorded by The Hollies. It
sounds much like his 'Reasons To Believe' album of the same year, full of dark
and brooding thoughts, a heavy riff and another very modern feel to it. In this
re-write of 'When Your Light's Turned On' from the other perspective (with the
;'aloofness' of 'Long Cool Woman' thrown in for good measure), Clarke's called
round on-spec to see his lover but is shocked by the sight of another shadow on
the blinds. He tries to keep cool but loses it in the chorus, spitting out the
chorus 'Hey babe if you've nothing to hide, how come you got two shadows on
your blinds?' (Interesting how window blinds are such a common Hollies theme,
although it's usually Terry's object of choice). Like 'Naomi' this song manages
to be at once very modern and very Hollies (despite some awfully clumsy
artificial drumming nowhere near Bobby's standard) and you can hear a lot more
of the Hollies' early R and B influences than on any song for years: it's only
a shade away from the sheer bluesy misery of 'Nobody' this one. Whilst not quite
up to the other two songs this is another of The Hollies' best tracks in years
and again it's criminal that such a good song went unrecognised. Find it on: Grrrr nothing, unless you saw The Hollies in
concert and bought the 'Purple Rain' cassette single as a souvenir!

Oh
dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Oh dearie me oh dear. I can't tell you how
thrilled my eleven year old self was that The Hollies were back with a new
single - their first in three years - and more to the point EMI actually
believed in the track this time around, giving the usual spiel about what a big
hit it was going to be and how it sounded like Vintage Hollies. Released in a
blitz of publicity about reaching their 30th anniversary, [332] 'The Woman I
Love' came out - and most fans promptly wished it hadn't. Had the 1964 look
Hollies recorded this sappy gormless Nik Kershaw song that would have been bad
enough - but recording a song this simple and stupid in such a blaze of
publicity when the band were in their fifties was just asking for trouble. The
song doesn't make any sense: most of the song tries to say 'I love you' but can
only say so in the third person, describing her good qualities. Dumb,
admittedly, but almost cute. But then we have a middle eight where the narrator
turns on her, telling her to 'walk out that door, what's to lose baby? What the
hell?!' which was about what I said when I first heard it - this bit comes from
nowhere and it's odd to hear The Hollies using their first swear word on such
an inconsequential song (they use the word 'damn' later on too). After that
we're straight back in the gormless and unfinished sounding nursery rhyme
chorus with no explanations given ('The woman I love is standing next to me...'
desperately needs a 'der der der' to match up the symmetry of the rhythm). It's
one of those songs that, like Macarena and The Birdie Song,. is built round an
infectious rhythm and sounds as if it comes with its own dance steps/actions
(The 'woman' I 'love' has 'eyes' of 'blue' a 'face' like 'heaven'...) although
thankfully The Hollies never actually performed any (the thought of it in my
head is bad enough now - and in yours too now. Sorry about that).With a
synthesiser riff that sounded horribly dated at the time never mind now, a
distinct lack of Hollies harmonies and only the briefest of guitar solos, this
was completely the wrong song for EMI to get behind and duly limped into only
the bottom end of the charts (#41 in the UK), better than The Hollies had
managed in a decade but still awfully disappointing given all the money and
attention spend on it. If only EMI had backed the better singles of the period
instead (take your pick from 'Too Many Hearts Get Broken' 'Shine Silently' and
'Purple Rain') then I'm convinced there'd be at least another three hundred
pages to go in this book, full of tales of how The Hollies revitalised their
career and unlocked another side to their commercial potential. However this
song couldn't have been a hit in anyone's hands and its failure had major
repercussions - EMI never got behind The Hollies in quite the same way again,
the track all but killed off The Hollies' career as a stuo band for the next
twenty years and it's failure and suitability made Clarke think about leaving
the band, although he'll still be around in the Hollies live band for another
six years yet. What an awful shame. The Hollies
compilations I love have eyes of blue, covers of songs that speak so true and
don't have any inclusion of this track at all! However if you really want to
hear it try 'The Air That I Breathe - The Best Of The Hollies' (1993) and 'The
LOng Road Home' (2003).

The
last new recording under the Hollies name with Allan Clarke in the band is a
cover of a smoky Richard Marx ballad well suited to his strengths. [333] 'Nothing Else But Love' was
recorded at the end of sessions for 'The Woman I Love' but sadly only came out
at the time in Germany (on our old friend 'The 30th Anniversary Collection')
and is one of the rarer Hollies songs in the rest of the world. That's a shame
because it's a far more deserving song and performance than 'Love', with a
haunting keyboard refrain and a sudden surging key change in the middle
straight out of a Eurovision entry. Given that this is the 'near' goodbye, it's
a very poignant choice: Clarke' narrator sings about destiny 'bringing me to
you' but how he's too far down a road that he can't turn back, despite knowing
that he's 'so close to paradise'. Marx's
original version is melodramatic and bold, but fantastic interpretations as The
Hollies always were, the band calm the song down and make the song not so much
about urgency as a slow-burning passion that can never be extinguished. Along
with 'Silently' and 'Rain' it remains the definite performance by this line-up
of the band, with Tony's background effects meeting Bobby's heavy drumming
head-on, while Ian Parker's keyboards and Alan Coates' harmonies add colour.
The result is a small triumph that shows how much life there still was in the
band and a fitting coda to the Clarke era, excelling on another classic Hollie
cover ballad about the wonders of love (which is more or less where we came).Shockingly this final excellent song with Clarke in the
band is only available in Germany on the '30th Anniversary Collectioon' set
(1993)

Sigh.
The last Hollies recording made with Allan Clarke is not just a re-recording
but one where the band are drowned out by an all-star cast of soap actors who
shockingly are even more wooden singing than they are at acting. [160b] 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother'
is an all-new re-recording made for the various artists record 'The Coronation
Street' album and, well, it won't surprise you to learn a) that it blew all the
competition from such non-stars as Cliff Richard and Michael Ball away b) the massed chorus of
Coronation Street stars are awful (they can't even act so why are they expected
to sing?) and c) that I'm so ashamed the Hollies made me buy the flipping thing
that I currently house it in a Hollies box having shredded the original cover -
just in case anyone I know sees it. Presumably someone hit on the bright idea
to unite two institutions because they both come from Manchester and are both
long-lived (they both started around the same time, though The Hollies are a
year or solo older in terms of 'releases' - it goes without saying they've aged
rather better too). But it's a misguided idea: The Hollies have always done so
well because they're 'real', even when they're acting; 'Coronation Street' has
always done so well because it's so obviously fake, with such appalling acting
the powers that be seem to deliberately cast the worst actors they can find -
and get rid of stars a few years in when they've finally had enough experience
to act and realise how truly lousy the scripts are. The Hollies should never
have been asked: this is a project very much beneath their talents and the
backing chorus isn't just poor, it's abysmal. That said, much of this
re-arrangement of 'He Ain't Heavy' works quite well in terms of The Hollies'
role in the record (if clearly not up to the original). There's some nice strummed
acoustic guitar opening, the new string arrangement doesn't drive the song so
much as float over it like a cloud, Tony Hicks fits in a brief guitar solo at
the end, Bobby Elliott gets to sound like every other bored 1990s drummer
playing repetitive parts over and over throughout the whole song (but better
parts, obviously, than most lesser 1990s bands) and the push into the middle
eight isn't so much a moment of tension as blessed relief that the Coronation
Streeters have shut up. Had Clarke recorded this earlier, when his voice was
under less strain and had the entire cast of Coronation Street characters
fallen down a disused mineshaft or been hit by a plane the week before this
could still just about have been rather good. As it is Clarke's penultimate
role in The Hollies and his last as lead singer ends not with a bang but with a
whimper. Who'd have guessed that even a couple of years earlier when EMI were throwing
their weight behind 'The Woman I Love'? The road has many a winding turn
indeed. Find it on: Various Artists set 'The
Coronation Album' (1995)

Thankfully
the very last recording to feature both Clarke and the unexpected return of
Graham Nash is much better. [334] 'Peggy Sue Got Married', where The Hollies effectively 'become'
their namesake Buddy Holly's backing band. The idea was Graham's, the producers
of the rather odd film 'Peggy Sue Got Married' having excitedly bought the
rights to Buddy's unreleased demo recording of the song and possessing the
forefront to look for a leading American artists with Buddy connections turned
to Graham. Whilst Nash could have done the track solo or even at a pinch with
CSN (who were doing some odd things in the mid-1990s), he felt duty bound to
pass it over to The Hollies (although he toyed with the idea of a super-group
first featuring members of other Holly inspired musicians like Paul McCartney
and The Stones). Despite the fact that The Hollies had already covered the song
on the 'Buddy Holly' album, they were keen to take part and one last reunion
took place at Abbey Road Studios (the first time any of the band had been back
in five years). Alas by then the film idea had been dropped, but keen to see
the idea through to completion Nash wangled some strings for a Buddy Holly
tribute album in the works and got a deal to include the song on that instead.
The result is a bit mixed to be honest: like the Beatles Anthology recordings a
year later (were the fab four nicking
ideas from The Hollies again?!) all the clever computer technology and IQs set
to solve IQ'd technology in the world can't make Buddy and the Hollies sound as
if they belong in the same room; at best it sounds like Buddy's singing to them
down a telephone line - at worse down a tunnel. However there is a frisson of
excitement at hearing what the two halves might have sounded like together and
a great deal of joy at having Allan Graham and Tony singing together with that
distinctive blend one last time (although they don't get all that much to do to
be honest). The star of the show though is Hicks' blistering guitar solo, which
gives up trying to be warm and cosy like everyone else in the band and cuts to
the jugular on what's actually a heartbreaking song: the love of Buddy's
narrator's life, his muse who inspired him to write, has just got married to
some other feller she barely knows and he didn't even get to hear about it! An
almost song that isn't quite the perfect send off for Clarke and Nash but is at
least a lot better than the curious reggae arrangement from the 1980 version
and easily the best thing on the various artists tribute record (the only other
listenable recording is a drunk sounding Mark Knopfler performing 'Learning The
Game'). Find it on: 'Not Fade Away - Remembering
Buddy Holly' (1996)

At
the time of its release, [335] 'How
Do I Survive?' was meant to be the start of a whole new legacy for the
post-Allan Clarke era Hollies. With fans still not sure quite what to make of
Carl Wayne, the compilers of the 'Long Road Home' box set requested a song to
include at the end of the set as a sort of 'this is what the Hollies sound like
now' coda. Perhaps sensibly, the band looked back to a past writer they'd used
with a proven track record - Paul Bliss, who last worked for the band on the
'What Goes Around' reunion album of 1983 and must have mended his bridges with
the band somewhere along the way after defecting to America to work with Nash.
Alas the good work of all this preparation was to be undone by Carl's sad and
unexpected death the following year, meaning that this is the only professional
recording that Wayne ever made during his four year stint as a Hollie. Sadly we
don't know if this style would have been a one-off or the template for
everything to come but you have to say, judged in isolation, it doesn't bode
very well. Like 'The Woman I Love' The Hollies have tried to buy themselves out
of a sticky hole with a much-publicised and overly poppy song, but The Hollies
were never good at this sort of a pop song but one that had a kernel of emotion
within the catchy tune they could make come alive - emptyheaded and cheeky,
this is more like something Herman's Hermits or Dave Clark Five would have done
than the earlier Hollies greats. It sadly doesn't sound much like a combination
of The Hollies and Wayne's band The Move, which could have been something
special (indeed was, according to some reviewers who caught this line-up of the
band live) and instead just sounds like drab pop of any era. That said, there
is emotion in this song - the band just aren't 'allowed' to use it thanks to
the curious contrast between the 'putting on a brave face now you're gone'
lyrics and the full teeth smiles of the melody, which with its twinkling piano
riff and wide eyed stare is in danger of sounding like Chris De Burgh. Apart
from Carl and Ian Parker on keyboards The Hollies don't get much to do - had
there been more of this era Hollies to judge this might not have been such a
bad thing (Hicks and new harmony singer Steve Lauri sound pretty good together
and backing Wayne the few times all three are in unison), but alas if this is
all we have to go on then the old caveat of1972 applies: however good, this
really ain't The Hollies, with the added problem this time around that what it
is isn't actually that good anyway. Find it on: 'The
Long Road Home' (2003) plus the odd (and we mean odd) Hollies compilations from
the 21st century.

[
] 'I Would Fly' is, to
be generous, a far better song than anything from the two Howarth-era albums.
It's a breathy ballad that's no 'Air That I Breathe' but does at least sound a
little like The Hollies, with a stately piano opening, some nice use of strings
and very Hollies lyrics about wishing for a better tomorrow. Howarth sounds
much better here - he doesn't go over the top once or try to sound like Clarke.
Admittedly the lyrics are about as predictable as you can get and much fun can
be had imagining Orville the duck replying as the song goes on...('I wish we
could fly...' 'Where Peter? Right up the sky? But you can't!') Overall though the second best
Hollies recording of the 21st century (just behind 'Dolphin Days'). Why aren't
the albums as good as this, then? Find it on: the
occasional modern Hollies best-of

Hmm,
well this is unexpected. { ] 'Skylarks'
is a welcome return to the tour de force days of 'Soldier's Song', with an
opening that sounds more like Marillion (all wheezing accordions and thundering
synths) that's interesting enough that a rather wet lyric and Howarth vocal
can't interrupt. The theme of wondering what happened to romance is a very
Hollies one (see 'Too Many Hearts Get Broken') and the band generally cope well
on a song that's generally more ambitious than their usual popfare, especially
Ian Parker (this track is easily his finest hour during his long term as a
Hollie). The song doesn't really resolve itself (which puts it slightly below
'I Would Fly' in my estimation) but you have to say that the new-look Hollies
are doing far better with singles than LPs and have arguably released the two
best Hollies singles in fifteen years. Let's hope this means that there';s
another Hollie renaissance on the way and we'll be discussing their next batch
of recordings long before 'The Hollies At Sixty' comes out! Find it on: 'The
Hollies At 50' (2014)

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About Me

Born in the nexus point of Britain (well, the Midlands anyway), the author has swapped the concrete paradise of Stafford for …the concrete paradise of Ormskirk/Skelmersdale.

Along the way he got a music GCSE and A level (including a national award for his composing work) and music theory grades 3-5, so he should at least vaguely know what he is talking about. He was also awarded an English and History degree from St Martin’s College in Carlisle for his research work and ability to make 3000-word essays quadruple in length overnight (Carlisle remains his spiritual home, whenever it isn’t raining – which is, sadly, most of the time).

Journalism wise his highlights have been writing possibly the worlds last article on Gene Pitney (which was due to have been published two days after he died), enthusing over debut singles by now semi-famous artists like The Editors, Feeder and Newton Faulkner and – the most worthy of all – told the world that Chico out of X Factor was an idiot with a loud voice and nobody should buy his single. Of course, everybody did and it made number one. His artistic crest is the following description of a record: ‘two parts melodious funk to one part Theolonious Monk’!

When not writing his past-times include moaning about continuity points on sci-fi programmes such as Dr Who, Blake's 7, Sapphire and Steel and Timeslip, vainly supporting Alonso through thick and thin in F1 racing, cursing at the Coalition for their sheer incompetence and lying down in a darkened room recovering from chronic fatigue attacks.

The author has spent approximately 31 and a half of his 32 years listening to music in some form or another (he was asleep for the other 6 months before you ask) and has been officially declared ‘monkeynuts’ after spending three months working at the Skills Exchange in Skelmersdale (which seemed like a lifetime). This website - which started off at its 'old' home at www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com - is now six years old, has covered over 450 albums by various artists and has received in total more than 280,000 hits. You can hear the author's music, see his youtube videos (starring Max The Singing Dog) and read more of his awful puns and jokes about the Spice Girls by checking out the 'links' pages further down the site...

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Hello and welcome to our fourth special edition of our newsletter. Our past special editions have looked at AAA compilations (News and ...

List of links for main reviews per band

Please click here to read more articles from 'back issues' of album reviews from News, Views and Music, which are listed alphabetically by band and chronologically by album (please note this section is a pain to update so we only do it every so often – have a look bottom right at the ‘100 most recent articles’ if you’re after more to read!) Please note also that we still have about 100 records we haven’t covered yet – we should be finished this humungous project in about two years (depending on how many more Neil Young puts out between now and 2017!!!) so please be patient with us if we haven't got to your favourite yet (although if we haven’t and you really want to read it, then why now leave a comment and let us know and we’ll move it up the pile!) Please also see below this list for 'top five'/'top ten' articles. Happy reading - and, err, sorry about the eye strain!!! Updated as of April 2017